Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Jazz in the Park – every Wednesday

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In keeping with our plan to attend at least one of Toronto’s many interesting events or festivals once a week throughout the summer, Chris and I went to an outdoor Jazz festival last night.

It was Chris’ birthday yesterday and he loves Jazz music so he suggested we go to the “Mosaic Does Jazz” Jazz in the park festival that’s being held every Wednesday evening from 5 pm until 8 pm at the Coxwell Parkette from July 1st to Sept. 2nd. It’s close to our home and man, was the music ever fantastic!

We saw the Terra Hazelton Quartet and as I said the music was great. The singer had a beautiful bluesy voice just made for singing Jazz songs. She was accompanied by a Jazz guitarist, a bassist and a drummer.

We had thought that the music was to start at 8 pm so we didn’t actually get there until about 7! Oops! We brought a friend from work, our dog and three folding chairs and parked ourselves about 15 feet from the center of the stage.

I didn’t realize that there would be other things going on in the small park, but when we got there we noticed that there were a couple of vendors selling food like hotdogs and hamburgers, a coffee shop, a person doing massage, someone doing therapeutic touch and a jewelry booth with lovely pearl jewelry. I’m sure there were a few other tent booths that I missed.

There was a good crowd. Probably people that lived in or who were shopping in the neighborhood. Lots of kids too. One little girl, maybe a year old, kept trying to climb onto the stage! Oh and our dog barked whenever anyone applauded and that warranted a “woof” from the singer. LOL

Oh and in response to the person that commented on my post “time to stop letting life pass me by” where I first talked about attending a Toronto event once a week …

He said “An event every weekend? Isn’t that kind of overdoing it? Doing nothing can feel like a waste of time, but doing too much can be too.”

My response … well I’ve been sick and on medical leave from work for the last few years. Believe me, I haven’t done too much and I’m sick of it. Toronto is a great city with tons of things to do in the summer (despite the garbage strike stinking up the place!). Believe me, I won’t overdo it as my body won’t let me. Going to a park to watch musicians play won’t overextend me nor will going out for a couple of hours to one of Toronto’s many food festivals. I just want to get out and do things when I’m feeling up to it and as I said summer in Toronto is the perfect time to attend events, try foods that you’ve never tried before and just get out and feel alive.





We finally fixed that dripping shower

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Ever since we moved into our house in 2001 and we’ve had problems with the shower in the basement. You see it drips – a lot!

My husband has changed the shower head and that didn’t stop the dripping. He also tried a few other things to fix the shower and still it dripped. So, since he’s the main one in the house that uses the shower he started turning off the water supply for the shower after he has a shower. For a long time that seemed to stop the constant dripping as the water supply to the shower was only on when the shower was being used. However, recently the shower started dripping again even when the water supply was shut off on the pipes outside the bathroom.

I rarely use the bathroom in the basement, but I was down there last Friday and I realized that the constant dripping of the shower head was making a very moist environment. In fact, the shower appeared to have some mold in it. So when my husband came home from work that evening I told him we had to try to do something about the shower’s constant drip.

So on Saturday my husband got busy trying to fix the shower. First he took care of the possible mold problem by washing down the shower walls with a bleach and water solution (several times). Then he tried to take the hot and cold water faucets off the shower. Maybe we just needed to put a washer inside?

Now I have to tell you that while I wanted him to fix the shower I wanted him to do so without having to spend any money on it. Our funds are very low these days and we just can’t afford to get new Moen faucets for the shower right now. Not if we can help it!

Of course things went wrong. He got one of the shower faucets if no problem, added a washer (as suggested by one of the guys at Home Depot) and that stopped the dripping for the cold water. However he had a lot of trouble getting the hot water faucet off and when he did he couldn’t get the two pieces apart to add a washer.

He decided to take the part to Home Depot to see if he could find an inexpensive replacement. I think they laughed at him! The part is apparently about 25 years old and not easy to replace. Even a specialty plumbing store didn’t help!

I started to think this was going to turn out like our kitchen tap story! Remember a few months ago I posted about how Chris was trying to take the Brita filter off our kitchen tap and ended up breaking the end … causing us to have to buy a whole new set of kitchen faucets? Yeah that was fun!

In the end we didn’t have to spend any money on new faucets or smaller replacement parts. Instead we took one of the plumbing specialists suggestions and soaked the faucet part in vinegar for several hours to remove some of the corrosion on the fixture. Then, yesterday evening, my husband used two wrenches to carefully pry to pieces apart. He added a washer, put the parts together again and installed the faucet in the shower where it had been before and ta da! It seems to have worked. No drip, drip, drip!

I really have to be careful when I ask my husband to do home repairs! It seems to always cost us more money and or frustration than we think it will!

At least the water bill should be a little bit lower now. I’m sure all that dripping was wasting a lot of water. Plus, now that the shower area won’t have a constant supply of moisture the room and shower stall should hopefully be mold and mildew free. I hope!

Have you ever tried to do what seems like it should be a small home repair only to end up spending way more time and money than you ever thought you would to fix the problem?

Time to stop letting life pass me by

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My poor poor blog. I’ve been neglecting it lately! I’ve been neglecting my regular readers as well.

It just seems that I got so busy over the last month or so that I haven’t managed to do much writing in any of my many blogs. Life got in the way, you might say!

IMG_5901 For some reason my garden has kept me busier this year than the last few! Maybe it’s just that I feel more like working in it? Anyway … over the last two weeks or so my husband and I managed to add about 30 big bags of mulch to the garden beds (after weeding of course)! No wonder my back has constantly been aching lately!

We’ve also taken our dog to the beach for a swim in Lake Ontario a few times, plus we’ve attended a few events that have been going on in Toronto. Namely – the first annual Beach Ribfest and the Toronto Ribfest, the Mississauga Waterfront festival where we saw Bruce Cockburn play, Woofstock in early June and I think a few more things.

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Even though my Crohn’s is still flaring and makes me feel awful a good portion of the time I’ve decided to stop letting life pass me by. Toronto is a great city, with lots to do, especially in the summer. There’s something going on just about every weekend!

So, a few weeks ago I said to my husband lets try to attend one Toronto event every weekend. Provided the event is of interested to the two of us of course. So that’s what we’ve been doing. Hmmm maybe this weekend we’ll try to view the Molson Indy (we don’t have tickets). There’s also the Toronto Fringe Festival and the Outdoor Art Exhibition this weekend. Summerlicious is on too (gourmet meals for a deal of a price) – maybe we’ll eat out as well!

If you live in Toronto or within driving distance and you’re looking for interesting inexpensive things to do check out the Toronto Festivals and Events Calendar. I’m sure you’ll find something that suites your tastes.

We didn’t do anything special this past weekend, but last Wednesday was Canada day and we had a friend over. Actually it’s a guy that Chris works with at the hospital. So I was entertained by two talented guitar players (Chris and our friend) as they played guitar in our backyard for a few hours.

Unfortunately, due to the ongoing garbage and city workers strike here in Toronto Canada Day festivities were canceled. So no fireworks … but it seemed that many of our neighbors bought their own Fireworks and set them off on the street or the park just down the road from us, so we could see fireworks all around our house!

Odd that all the rest of the big Toronto events (Gay Pride parade, Molson Indy etc) can all go on with the garbage strike and city worker strike, but national festivities for Canada Day were canceled? Unfair!

It’s Chris’ birthday on Wednesday. I don’t know what we’re going to do yet, but I think Chris’ parents are planning on coming into town for a visit sometime on the weekend. When Chris was talking to his mom the other day she said they wanted to take us out to dinner, so i guess along with the other multitude of interesting activities that we might do this weekend, going out to dinner to celebrate my husbands birthday will be on the list.

Anyway … if Chris and I stick to the plan we’ll be doing something new and interesting every weekend so even though I might be a little busier than I have been in the recent past I’ll try to blog more often and I should have some interesting tales to tell about the things we’ve been up to – photo’s too!

Do you find that life gets busier in the summer? Do you try to attend various events or festivals going on in your city during the summer?

BTW A belated Happy Canada Day and 4th of July to my Canadian and American visitors!

Recovering from a busy weekend

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I think I’m still recovering from the weekend! Man did we do a lot of stuff!

On Saturday we decided to visit some of the buildings in the Toronto Open Doors event. We started with the Don Jail – an empty unused jail that dates back to the 1800’s which will soon, oddly enough, become part of a hospital. It was the last chance for the public to see the inside of the building for free.

Unfortunately the lineups were over three to four hours long so we decided to purchase tickets for one of their upcoming Ghost tours of the Don Jail. So sometime in the next month or so Chris and I will be going on an evening tour of the jail which is said to have many ghosts.

After not getting into the jail we decided to visit this old bowling alley that had just reopened. They had the old Brunswick five pin bowling pins that worked on a string system. We got to see how that worked and were offered free bowling. We didn’t bowl because we decided to go to Tod Morden Mills which was also participating in Open Doors Toronto.

At Tod Morden Mills we went into the art gallery and East Side Players theater – we got to see the theater control room as well, and then we visited some of the old houses on the property. We also took a walk on the wild flower trail there and I took some photos.

When we got home I finished planting some of the annuals that I’d purchased oh, about two weeks ago, and then Chris and I had chicken, sausages and grilled potatoes on the BBQ.

Sunday was spent doing more work in the garden. Chris cut the lawn and I planted some seeds and also reseeded the lawn.

Then yesterday even though it wasn’t really the weekend it always feels like it since Chris has Mondays off we did a little more yard work and took our Lab Midnight to the vet for her annual shots. She’d woken up early yesterday morning and threw up. She does that sometimes … I think it’s because she likes to try to eat weeds when we take her out for walks. No matter how hard we try to get her to stop doing that she always finds grass or some weed to bite at.

Anyway … her vet check up was good. She’s healthy. No worms, no heart worm and the vet was pleased with her shiny black coat.

I liked having such a busy weekend, but my body didn’t! I think I’m paying for it today. I feel like I took a handful of weight loss pills or something. My stomach is growling, I’m hungry … but everything I eat is going through me at high speed! Not good. Oh well … I’ll probably feel better tomorrow if I take it easy today.

So how was your weekend? I know that my American readers celebrated Memorial day – I’ll bet that many of you had family and friend get together’s, BBQ’s and went to see fireworks.

My husbands 150 dollar mistake

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Why do guys tinker with things that don’t really need fixing? Why???

Last weekend Chris was in the basement cleaning up our tool area when he found our old Brita “on tap” water filter. The one that we had on our kitchen faucet had been leaking a little bit so Chris came up with the great idea that he’d just put the old Brita filter back on. (of course I think we replaced the old filter because it was leaking …)

I think that Chris thought something was screwed into the end of the faucet so after removing the first Brita filter and trying to replace it with the old one (which didn’t work) he started prying away at the end of the faucet. I think he was doing that so that we could put the end cap back on the end of the tap – if he could find it in the basement where I’m sure he put it when he took it off so that the Brita Filter could be added to the tap.

The next thing I knew I heard swearing. Chris had somehow broken off a piece of the end of the faucet!

Chris’ tinkering of course meant that we needed to replace the whole kitchen facet! Why? Well when we turned on the water it pretty much sprayed all over since the end of the tap was broken. I guess it’s good that we aren’t totally broke, but it was an expense that we certainly didn’t need!

It was about 7 pm when we decided we needed a new tap so we rushed off to Home Depot. We had to go fast because it was closing at 8 pm! Once there we picked out a Moen facet – chrome to match our double sinks. It was something like $126 for the faucet, plus we bought some plumbers tape and putty to prevent leaks – all in all with tax it came to just under $150!

It’s one of those that have a long arching tap and a single levered handle to control the stream of water and temperature of water. Similar to our old one, but much nicer. The old facet was a very cheap set that the previous home owners must have put in when they “cheaply” redid the kitchen before selling.

I like faucets with a lever handle. Maybe it’s the nurse in me liking to keep things from getting contaminated, but if your hands are dirty you can just use your wrist or the side of your hand to flip the water on – that way the handle doesn’t get contaminated with whatever is on your hands that needs to be washed off.

The next day when Chris went into the basement to continue cleaning up the tool area and to try to clear out some of the clutter in the basement (we’re having our oil tank replaced in April so the basement needs to have some space to move around) I told him to stick to his work and not find things to fix or that would distract him from the job he was supposed to be doing! God know we don’t need any more expensive mistakes!

Guys! Geesh!

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